3 Secrets To An Influential Resume Summary
Writing a resume ‘summary of qualifications’ that stops employers cold and makes them realize you’re the right candidate can be challenging. After all, you’re good at what you do, but can be tricky to boil down your ROI to concise statements in hopes of standing out. 
For most people, writing a summary of qualifications is such a major task that they look around at other resume examples to get ideas.
Here are some insider tips to creating a summary that exemplifies your personal brand in just a few words – making employers take notice:
1. Lose the Boilerplate Language . Today, every professional is self-motivated and results-driven (and if they aren’t, they’ll be spending the majority of their time job hunting).
Copying generic summary phrases from other resumes is one of the worst sins you can commit, because it’s a sure way to tell employers that you’re identical to everyone else.
Shake things up instead by making a list of your top value-added skills employers need. Do you complete projects faster or more accurately than colleagues?
Have you been promoted quicker, due to your business acumen or leadership skills? Are you able to spot new business opportunities and close deals that are lucrative for your employer?
This list will give you ideas to use in writing your summary—concepts and skills unique to YOU that most likely won’t show up in the resumes of your competition.
2. Pull in Quantifiable Facts . Employers aren’t hiring just to have a potential source of help – they need the ROI you can deliver. So show them your value in figures and metrics from throughout your work history.
This example of an Operational Safety Manager resume summary provides a quick snapshot of consistent value, backed up by metrics:
“Safety advocate and operational leader who influences profit (up to 20% single-year increase) by fostering productive, engaged employees. Hands-on manager with strong financial acumen, delivering regular cost, efficiency, and volume forecasting improvements throughout 80,000-square foot plants.”
As shown here, quantifiable achievements in your resume summary help to quickly distinguish you from other candidates – even in a crowded field with hundreds of applicants.
3. Drop Names. Marketing copywriters have known for years that name-dropping gets attention. Now, you can take a cue from these professionals to amp up the volume in your resume summary section.
If you’re in a sales leadership role, you can mention names of major clients, with a line such as “Closed high-value deals with Apple , Cisco Systems , and Oracle .”
Even if client names are confidential, your summary can use the information in a different way, such as “Created millions in key partnerships with Fortune-ranked corporations in the technology industry.”
Not in sales? You can still reference the names of partner alliances, past employers, or vendors to show collaboration and leadership skills, as in this example:
“Senior Vice President commended for turning around performance through sourcing negotiations with Baptist Health System , Medical Center of Austin , and the Mayo Clinic .”
In conclusion, your resume summary isn’t the place to be modest and toned-down in describing your brand value. Instead, consider boosting its effectiveness with well-placed, strategic information on your specific value-add to employers. – Originally posted on onTargetjobs by Laura Smith-Proulx
3 Secrets To An Influential Resume Summary is a post from: Glassdoor Blog
Related posts:
- 3 Resume Secrets To Make You Shine
- 10 Great Keywords To Use On Your Resume
- How to Replace Deadly Resume Phrases
Changes to Wisestep Job Posting Policies
Attention Recruiters !
We have made a few changes to our Job posting and publishing policies in the last few days based on the feedback from our members. Our Support team has received many complaints about inaccurate and in many cases misleading job posts. Some recruiters were using our Free Job ads for publishing things that were not quite jobs or employment opportunities. We've cleaned up and removed the jobs that did not qualify with our new critieria for posting a job.
Here's a quick guide on what Jobs will not pass through
Jobs that are NOT ALLOWED :
a) Work from home / Virtual worker/ Telecommute jobs or variations of these b) Commission only jobs
c) Adult companionship seeking jobs.
d) Jobs asking for applicants based on Religion, Age, Gender, Visa status or sponsorship
e) Business or franchisee Job Opportunities. Train and Place Jobs will also not be allowed.
f) Don't mention your email address or Phone Numbers in the Job post
Finally we reserve the right to remove your Job post at our discretion for reasons that may not be mentioned here but that we think may be offensive or unacceptable to our users. We are keen to offer our members a professional and relevant experience in their job seeking experience and we hope that all Recruiters will use as much of our Free Offerings as possible to make their search for Talent easier and faster.
Here's a quick recap of what you can do for FREE ON Wisestep.com a) Unlimited Job Posts
b) Publish your jobs on your Social Network Feeds of Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter
c) One Click Job sharing on upto 50 Linkedin Groups
d) Built in Applicant Tracking System
e) Build your own Jobs page and plug it in to your Website. Convert Passive Visitors to Job Applicants
Do write to us with your feedback on support@wisestepmail.com or share in your thoughts in the commenting section below Thanks for your support
Team Wisestep.com
Recruiter Signups touches 10,000 mark !
We are extremely happy to announce that the total number of Recruiters on Wisestep.com has crossed the 10,000 mark this week. This is a milestone our entire team is very proud of. With your continued support and Feedback we hope to hit much larger numbers in the coming days but now is also the time to take a few moments to cherish this acheivement.
Over the past many months, Wisestep.com has put together a combination of unique Recruitment tools that we hope have tremendously improved their productivity and helped them hire quicker and faster.
As more and more people spend time on Social Media, Recruiters need to use tools that help them reach people where they are most likely to be found. On Social Networks. IF you are not making your jobs visible on Social Media, you are losing out on some easy to get referrals and Job applications.
At Wisestep.com recruitment is inherently Social with Jobs being easily shared on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter (with a few more to follow soon).
We've also added the ability for you to share jobs on
Multiple Linked in Groups with a single click and flag it as a job or as a discussion depdnding on the preferences of the moderator of the group. If you haven't tried this out yet, you are still spending probably an hour doing something that should take less than a couple of minutes.
Some of the enthusiasm with which recruiters use our tools by the number of shares is also visible on our
Recruiter home page .
As we continue to add more cool features that helps you hire faster and makes you look goo, we ask all our users and supporters on supporters to do us a favor: Please don't keep us a secret. Tell all your friends and colleagues about us. Like us on
Facebook !
You can be Famous too!
Hi all,
Do you have great career and professional insights? Ever wondered why you can never get them published? We say, you deserve your chance to fame.
If you feel that you have a few thoughts to share - career development tips, job market trends, recruitment and hiring outlook, and all that jazz - write a short 400-word article and mail it over to us. We’ll go through it, select the best entries for the week, and post it on Wisestep as a Featured Article .
Your article will be reviewed by our Editorial Panel, and if selected, added to our Columns Section. Talk about exposure! It will even get a place in the Wisestep Homepage for a week. These articles will be visible to people who really matter - Industry Leaders, potential Contacts, Employers and Recruiters - and generate discussions which can positively impact your Career.
Besides, you can even use your Article to drive traffic to your website. Add a couple of links that track back to your blog or website. We’ll even provide a Badge which you can add to your website, bragging that you were featured on Wisestep.com.
The rules are simple. Jot down your thoughts, and send as many articles as you wish to editor@wisestepmail.com . Just make sure your work is original and previously unpublished.
So, get started; and let the creative juices flow!
The Wisestep.com Team 
Now Post your Jobs on Linkedin Groups
A recent survey revealed that Linkedin beats Facebook, by quite some way, when it comes to social recruitment activity. 79 percent of all Recruiters use Linkedin to source Candidates, while hardly 35 percent depend on Facebook. This comes as no surprize to any seasoned Talent Manager. Linkedin, after all, is a purely professional online network.
However, all those Recruiters posting Jobs on Linkedin isn’t exactly great news. That implies that your jobs will get lost within similar traffic and lose out on the attention it deserves to get. Besides, your inbox gets flooded with Job Applications from scarcely qualified Candidates. This has forced Recruiters to turn to more inventive methods for sourcing high-quality Candidates from Linkedin.
One of the best sources for top talent is industry-specific Linkedin Groups. Posting each Job, Group by Group, is hard work though. But, what if you can post all your Jobs directly on your Linkedin Groups at a single mouse-click?
Try out Wisestep’s new Linkedin Groups Publish feature. This service now allows you to Post any specific Job onto Linkedin Groups of which you are a Member. You can even select specific Groups to publish each Job in. After all, it doesn’t make sense to Share a Java Developer job on a Group for HR Professionals!
Jobs published in this manner will receive a more relevant audience of Referrers and potential Candidates. You can now get the attention of second and third-level Connections - Professionals who do not belong to your immediate network. These Jobs can also be Shared over social networks, giving it a wider reach than ever before. What’s better, you won’t have to display your email address and invite spam. All Applications and Resumes will be saved for review on your own Wisestep Dashboard.
Social Recruitment is smart. We just try to make it smarter.
Power your Linkedin Job Publishing with Wisestep!
We knew we were good. RASBIC says we are the Best!
Hi All,
We've got great news!
Wisestep bagged a bunch of prizes during the RASBIC Awards Programme held on February 16, 2012. We had applied for three categories, and we did have our heart in our mouth when we headed for the venue last week. But then, the jury loved our features so much, that they gave us Awards in all three categories. We were judged the best in: - Best Use of Technology in Recruitment
- Best Social Networking Recruitment Effort
- Best Innovation in Recruitment
Well, we're still reeling from the surprise. (Not that we didn't know we were good.)
But, it’s a warm feeling, all the same!
But, we do owe a lot to the Wisestep community as a whole!
We wouldn't have been able to make it without your support and generous feedback.
While we are doing good, we will try to get even better, and bring you the latest tools and technology which will enable you to take on all your hiring requirements.
Looking forward to hearing from you. Add a few comments, or send in your responses to support@wisestepmail.com.
Until then,
The Wisestep.com Team 
The Future of Social Recruitment in 2012
Those in the HR industry would agree. 2011 was pretty much the Year of Social Recruitment. Recruiters and Employers ventured into Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, beaming across their jobs, hoping to reach out to the right candidate. Aspiring candidates resorted to commenting on these links and updates trying to catch the eye of the hiring manager.
With all the hype about Social Hiring, we should probably question the sustainability of the whole process. The spatial dimension of social networks are already cluttered with information, from photo updates to endorsement requests. So let's stand back and ask a few questions.
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Does job posts and career opportunities get the visibility they deserve?
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Does the overabundance of jobs make it, in fact, harder for candidates to find and apply for the right jobs?
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Can recruiters and hiring managers find able and qualified candidates from amongst the throng of responses they recieve online?
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Does sharing email IDs and Linkedin profiles on an online forum compromise on your privacy?
Most importantly, can social media sustain itself as a viable tool in recruitment and hiring practices without stumbling on its own largesse?
Social recruitment has integrated itself into hiring practices across the world. And there's no denying its value. However, what we need, at the moment, are dedicated career networks which can exist outside of, yet not independent from, the bigger social networks. This is what Wisestep aims to be.
Before we jump into wild and exagerrated assumptions, let us quickly assess how far Wisestep will be able to override the concerns we had shared above.
Visibility of Job Posts
Wisestep is a community of Professionals who share the common goal of furthering their careers. Hence, jobs and business opportunity will get precedence before much else within our network. Jobs posted on Wisestep are listed in a comprehensive Job Search Page, where candidates can look up opportunities that suit their qualifications. They are also published on over 35+ other websites and job aggregators, enhancing their online visibility. Recruiters can further improve their reach by sharing these jobs over their online networks. An easy job share feature allows you to send Job Alerts to individual Contacts, or post them directly on your own Profile. You can even set up a Publisher Settings to manage and track your online publishing.
Job Seekers' Ease of Access
Wisestep is dedicated to connecting Job Seekers and Passive Professionals to job opportunities that suit their professional profile. A faceted Job Search option allows you to narrow down the options and find just the right jobs you were looking for. Wisestep also has an intuitive algoritmh which can automatically suggest the best jobs to suitable candidates. By analysing your career goals and your professional profile, Wisestep will be able to recommend Jobs which match with your career ambitions. We can even recommend Jobs and Career Opportunities your friends will be looking for, allowing you to refer them to the right positions. Finally, even if you're not actively seeking a new job, you can always subscribe to our Job Feeds, or set up Job Alerts, so that you will get great opportunities delivered right in your inbox.
Finding Relevant Candidates
Recruiters unanimously agree that referrals are the best source for high-quality candidates. Wisestep is based on a social referral system, that can take referrals beyond your workplace, into cyberspace. Employers and recruiters can now share their Job Posts with the online Contacts on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. These Contacts can now Refer their friends, who are qualified to take up the job, with a single mouse click. Being part of your professional network, you can be sure that your referrers will just suggest the right candidates to take up jobs with your clientile. The referral scheme runs much deeper. Whenever someone opens a friend's profile on Wisestep, they will find a list of current jobs the person will be qualified for. While this process leads to more referrals, it also helps in pre-screening the candidates even before they are referred. Once you recieve an application, you can now search for the Candidate's profile on Wisestep to get the lowdown on his/her professional history.
The Matter of Privacy
Wisestep exists as a community of professionals outside of other social networks. So, you can always control who views your Profile and what information you share. Recruiters have a separate log in to secure their identity and post jobs for their corporate entity. With Wisestep, you needn't post your phone numbers or email addresses on a public forum – an act fraught with the danger of identity theft. Instead, Job seekers can apply directly to posted Jobs, and submit their CV's through a secure social channel. Recruiters, on the other hand, will be intimated personally of all responses they recieve via their corporate Email Address.
Social recruitment can, and will, sustain itself by transcending its boundaries while building on its specificity of providing hard-wired hiring solutions. That's what we hope to do as well.
For another great year of transformation,
The Wisestep.com Team
A Brand New Wisestep for a Brand New Year
2012 seems like a great year for your career, and we, at Wisestep, are out to do our best to help you out with it.
We are delighted to announce the launch of our new and enhanced version of our User Section for professionals and job seekers. The revamped User Section will help professionals build their career network, search and share job opportunities with greater ease and efficiency.
Over the past year, the Wisestep team had been relentlessly collecting feedback from users and professionals, the world over, on how we can improve performance and user experience. The new User Section reflects our commitment to your professional cause.
The redesign gives the User Section a smoother Web 2.0 look and feel. Bolder headers, crisper content, and a sleek design, makes it easier to navigate and a pleasure to use.
Users can now log into their Wisestep Account directly, or from Facebook or Linkedin. They can also expand their professional clout by bringing in friends and contacts from their social networks, through an easy one-step process.
The new User Section comes with a comprehensive User Profile. You can now add all your career-related information on a single, easy-to-view page. Update your Profile with relevant information to make yourself more attractive to potential contacts, and prospective employers.
Job sharing had always been the cornerstone of the Wisestep experience, and it will remain so. Go through our dedicated Job Search page to get a exhaustive rundown on the latest jobs in the network. Use the Faceted Search option to search for jobs, in a specific industry, company, locality, and lots more. Find just the right jobs you were looking for all along.
Found a career opportunity your friends would love? Referring them is easy, and gets done in a minute. Inform them by Email, or through your online networks. Also, keep an eye on jobs offering Referral Rewards. These jobs, marked out with a yellow tab, will fetch you a cash reward if a friend you suggested does get hired! Wisestep can even suggest the best Job Deals, offering the highest Referral Rewards in your locality on any specific day.
What makes Wisestep better than ever is how it can now search for and suggest just the right jobs for you. Fill in your Career Goals, and get notified whenever we find an opportunity that will help you move ahead in your career. Get recommendations for jobs your friends would love. Or subscribe to job titles you are looking forward to take. It's a lot more simpler with Wisestep.
With close to 100,000 professionals, experts and industry leaders on board, you can be sure you will meet the right people on Wisestep. We, in our small way, will just try to make your career networking an easier task. Log into your Wisestep Account, or Sign Up today, and give it a try.
Hoping to help you build a better career in 2012.
The Wisestep.com Team
Wisestep now Enables you to Recruit directly from your Website
Often, the simplest of tasks reap the greatest of results. It's a fact we often forget during the trials and tribulations of a candidate search.
Recruiters and hiring managers go to great lengths publishing their jobs in jobs sites, and via social networks. They search long and hard for referrals and scour resume databases for one ideal match. But what about finding candidates right from your corporate website? It's a task which most HR professionals conveniently neglect.
However, the Careers Section on your company's website is a vital tool in attracting and acquiring talent. Jobs posted on your website, are within your own domain, giving them greater credibility and visibility. They will stay there, right at the top, until you choose to remove them yourself. You can even edit a job post, or repost them conveniently.
Moreover, candidates applying through your website usually make a much better fit. These candidates have proven their interest in working with your organization. They had, after all, visited your website to find opportunities at your firm. Such interested candidates will remain loyal and engaged workers, lowering attrition levels within your organization.
A website updated with the most recent job opportunities is a sign of a professional, and well-managed organization. However, it's a task easier said than done. HR executives often have to chase their IT guy to upload recent openings onto their corporate website. So what happens when your company goes into a hiring spree? Can you really afford to lose out on top candidates with a proven interest in your company?
Wisestep offers you a feasbile solution. Try out the Wisestep Careers Page service.
Wisestep Careers Page allows you to integrate a customized careers section onto your corporate website. Design your own careers page – choose the layout, font, and colors to match your corporate brand. Now, in one simple step, you can copy a HTML code and integrate it within your company's website.
Your new careers page will be automatically updated with all jobs you post on Wisestep. No need to wait for your IT guy any longer. These jobs will also be published on 30+ other jobs sites and search engines. You can even share these jobs with your online friends and contacts over Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. You job posts can now get a broader reach than ever before.
Wisestep also makes it easier for your website visitors to apply for your jobs or refer suitable candidates. Instead of sending over an email, candidates on your careers page can apply directly to job posts. They can fill in their job application form, attach a CV and a cover letter, and send over their applications right from your website. Even better, passive job seekers can select from their friends and followers on Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter, and send over job referrals directly.
Even you employees will now find your hiring process more engaging and transparent. Add the Wisestep App on Facebook, to get your jobs listed on your Facebook Page as well. Now your employees and job seekers can view all job openings on your company's website or your Facebook Page and refer candidates right away. You can even offer them a Referral Reward for successful hires. Our efficient and intuitive Applicant Tracking System will keep track of all referrals you receive.
Wisestep adds a new dimension to your company's website. Now, with an interactive social referral system, you can finally turn your website visitors to job applicants and referrers.
How Wisestep Enhances your Employee Referral Program
In recent years, social recruitment has been touted as the most rewarding strategy in hiring circles. This might every well be true. However, over 80 percent of all recruiters still agree that they cover most external hires through candidate referrals. Companies which have an efficient in-house recruitment program regularly report to meet 50 to 75 percent of their hiring requirements through referrals from their employees.
Four-fifths of all HR managers prioritize candidate quality above most other hiring criteria. This makes employee referrals even more significant in the present scenario. Employee Referral Programs (ERP) generate considerable number of high-quality candidates, with greater job awareness and lower turnover rates. In this context, replacing your company's ERP with a full-fledged social recruitment effort is ill-advised and short-sighted. HR managers should, rather, utilize the interconnectivity of social media to complement their Employee Referral Programs.
Even the best-run organizations find it difficult to establish a cohesive Referral Program. Noticably, only a small fraction of the employee base regularly engage in such schemes. The main reasons cited by employees for low participation include:
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Low Awareness: Employees are either not aware of job openings in the company, or the presence of a rewarding referral program.
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Difficulty in Participation: The referral process is long and time-consuming.
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Lack of Transparency: Employees are not informed of the status of their referred candidate during the hiring process.
The concept appears simple enough; but, it's anything but simple to execute a world-class Referral Program. Most corporate referral programs struggle to meet 30 percent of their organizational hires. Any failure to optimize the performance of a tool as efficient and effective as an ERP is a failure nonetheless, even if it generates hires inline with industry averages.
Here's where Wisestep can step into a fray.
Wisestep integrates the userability and permeability of online networks into your company's Employee Referral Program – allowing greater internal participation, and higher number of referrals.
The first step towards a successful corporate Referral Program is through improving awareness among the employees. All job openings in the organization should be displayed in a space easily accessible and visible to all employees. With Wisestep, recruiters can update all their latest job posts to their coworkers by sending over individual emails.
Similarly, all jobs posted on Wisestep will also be displayed on over 30 other job sites and search engines. Recruiters and hiring managers can also share these posts on their online profiles or send them over to individual friends and contacts. Moreover, by adding the Wisestep App on Facebook, all new job opportunities will get displayed on the Jobs Section of the Company's Facebook Page.
Add the Wisestep Careers Page to update the company's website with the newest job openings. The customized Careers Page will automatically reflect all changes you make on Wisestep, helping keep your website up-to-date with the latest job information.
Now, employees can easily find and access all job openings at your organization, even while browsing through Facebook. And with an integrated Social Referral System, referring jobs through Wisestep gets done in a single click.
Social media integration allows job posts on Wisestep to be shared, posted, emailed and retweeted by employees. Each job posts comes with a Share option, and easy Refer and Help link. Employees can now share these jobs on their profiles, or send them over to interested candidates. With a single click, they can also select suitable candidates from their friends list within the online network. The ease of access will help giving your job posts a greater reach, by engaging the interest of a larger fraction of employees.
Wisestep also ensures that the hiring process stays transparent to referrers. Recruiters need not follow up individually to each referrer or candidate throughout the process. Instead, they can select from a list of email templates to be send over to the referrer, for each stage in their candidate's progress. This makes sure that the employee feels important and respected - not ignored and lost - within the hiring process. Greater transparency will lead to higher retention of participation in Referral Programs.
Around four-fifths of employers with a sound ERP offer employees referral bonuses/rewards for successful hires. These cash incentives, usually paid out after the selected candidate completes a pre-defined probation period at the company, helps in improving participation and a healthy competition amongst employees.
Jobs on Wisestep can also be labelled with referral rewards. These jobs can again be shared over social media, leading to a greater number of applications. Any click-backs leading to a hired candidate can later be rewarded as advertised. Wisestep intuitive Applicant Tracking System will keep track of all referrals, referred links and ensuing applications.
It is important to realize that while referral programs are probably the best in talent acquisition, most efforts end up in mediocrity. A few simple steps, and Recruiter's Account on Wisestep, can transform yours to a potent world-class corporate referral program.
You are just 3 Persons away from your Ideal Candidate
Anyone who had watched the movie Six Degrees of Separation will be aware of a seminal study in the 1960's that established that every person in the world is connected to any other through a maximum of six people. In other words, due to modern advances in communication, you will be acquainted to Barrack Obama or the village cheif tain of the Hausa tribe by a mere six people.
It might seem surprizing; but it is evidently proven. And that was way back in the sixties – when internet was unheard of even in sci-fi circles. So, no one would be surprized to hear that internet and the Facebook revolution have brought the world even closer together.
Facebook recently released certain stats, one of which made particularly fascinating reading:
We found that the degrees of separation between any two Facebook users is smaller than the commonly cited six degrees, and has been shrinking over the past three years as Facebook has grown, and now stands at 4.74 between any two Facebook users, no matter where they reside in the world.
This would mean that there are hardly 5 people connecting you to any other person in the world. This number falls significantly when the two people in question are within the same country. There are only three degrees of separation between any two members of the same country.
This literally opens up a world of opportunities for recruiters. Just spare a thought. What is you have a position as a "Java Developer" in hand. Think about the number of people who will be qualified to take this position up in the entire country, or possibly the world. (And don't worry about willingness; another study shows that 86 percent of Facebook users are, in fact, open to a new job.)
It is a pool of 800 million candidates, all of whom you know within five people.
Here's where a Social Referral can make all the difference.
As a recruiter, you can post a Job on Wisestep for free. You can now share this job with your network on Facebook. You job post will now be visible to all your friends and contacts. Now, few of them might decide to share this post on their profiles, or inform a few other friends personally. Your second degree contacts will be from a range of feilds and industries. And chances are, one of them will surely know a person who will be just about right for the job.
It's easy from there. Your ideal candidate gets a Referral from a friend. And they could send over their resume, directly to your inbox with just a few mouse clicks.
So what are you waiting for? Your new hire's just three persons away!
50 Highest Rated CEOs For 2013
How To Tone Down Your Resume For Better Results
Has your resume run amok? Has attention-deficit diluted your writing prowess as you seek for the latest, hippest ways to market You, Inc.?
If you have watched television programs or read articles from some of the major media lately, you’d think that “resumes gone wild” is the way to go. Here are three examples:
1. Six-second “ Vine resumes ” have crept through the latticework of the career landscape.
2. An Amazon resume developed by a web product manager creatively detailed his career.
3. Job-seeker billboards straddle the grounds of major highways.
Attempts to disrupt the resume market have indeed multiplied.
While brilliant, nuanced and attention-grabbing resumes are vital to set you apart from the competition, defining how to color outside the lines while maintaining a message that is crisp, clear and purposeful to your audience is equally vital.
Unfortunately, the media’s need for sound bites and traffic-generation often supersedes providing pragmatic value to the job-seeking audience. While boots-on-the-ground resume strategists who have intimate experience working alongside job seekers sit quietly holding their tongues, the airtime often goes to reports touting sexy, outlandish resume methods under the guise of ingenuity.
Filter Out the Hype
If this confusing message has sent your blood pressure soaring and compelled you to seek the craftiest way to market yourself, calm down – creative resumes that tell a ‘value story’ still net the best results.
More than ever, in fact, doing the roll-up-your-sleeves work to research your target company, hiring manager and company culture is critical (Glassdoor’s robust company search features will help speed your research!). By doing the arduous work in understanding your recipient’s needs and then vetting out your methods of fulfilling those requirement in your resume, cover letter, emails, elevator pitches, biographies and social media profiles you will ultimately stand apart and get the right person’s attention.
While the flash-in-the-pan resume infographics may dazzle a news reporter, the reader that matters is the one who will choose your resume from the stack of thousands and ask you for the interview. That person is silently waiting for the most qualified candidate, not the most innovative sound-bite resume.
Zero in Your Message on Your Target Reader
Your focus when writing your resume should be the hiring decision-maker, and how you will help them make more money, get things done faster, stop falling behind, look better, regain control of the overflowing project list and stop the bleeding! Nothing less, nothing more. It’s not about you and your capriciously designed resume. It’s about THEM.
Showcasing your words with a little flair is advisable – think, “framing” and value-add illustrations. For example, the following resume snippet shows how focus on the individual’s value proposition and achievements take center stage; the spots of color and the chart serve to frame the information, adding pop, but not overwhelming the message:
How To Tone Down Your Resume For Better Results is a post from: Glassdoor Blog
Related posts:
- Is Your Resume Starving For Attention?
- Try A Human Voice In Your Resume
- Expert Advice: How Long Should A Resume Be?
Why Giving Merit Raises Matters
Rewarding deserving employees with unscheduled pay raises or bonuses can go a long way in building loyalty, retaining top talent , and boosting morale. But, do it without a plan and it can yield the exact opposite results.
The whole idea behind merit raises is to reward the most productive and the highest-performing workers, which in turn incents others to do better. If merit raises are doled out on a whim or there isn’t a clear idea of how to outperform and get the raise, employees will be left confused and angry and, ultimately, less productive. 
“Doing it on the fly doesn’t always have the same impact as when you have a thoughtful, well-planned program tied to certain metrics,” says Laura Kerekes, chief knowledge officer at Think HR , the human resources consulting company. “If it’s done well it’s a retention tool, it’s a productivity and performance management tool.”
In order for companies to determine who should get a merit raise, they first have to figure out the goals of the firm. According to HR experts, companies have to come up with their strategic plan for the year, and then drill that down to departmental objectives, and finally, create metrics the individual employee will have to meet to reach those goals. Once the company comes up with a plan, it has to communicate clearly to employees what they will need to do to get a merit raise or bonus. “They should have a standard policy on how merit increases are going to be,” says Emily Carlson, senior VP at Randstad, the HR services company. “If you do for one but not for all, it will have a negative impact on retention and employee morale.”
There also needs to be flexibility built into the model, especially if the company operates in a competitive industry where it’s important to hold on to top talent. In that case a merit raise may be more about keeping an employee from going to a competitor than about the performance metrics he or she met. “For us, the market tends to dictate a lot of it,” says Chuck Fried, president and chief executive of technology staffing company TxMQ. “The market changes so quickly and occasionally we’ll find ourselves giving out an increase a couple of times a year because the employee is getting recruited by a competitor.” In other instances, Fried says merit increases happen because the employee deserves it, or the person is under paid compared to his or her peers and as a result requires a pay adjustment. “It’s a good idea to do what makes sense for the business,” says Fried.
While the standard increase for merit raises for 2013 is around 2.9 percent, according to Randstad, companies can give more or less depending on how much they can afford and what other perks they offer employees. For instance, a company may pay a below-market rate but have exemplar benefits, great time off and other intangibles that make it a top employer to work for. Another one may offer huge bonuses and high merit raises but not provide other perks like flexible time or a free gym membership.
“How much you give can be simplistic or complicated,” says Kerekes of Think HR. “More sophisticated models take a look at overall merit budget for the year and which departments are key to achieve the goals. Those departments may get a few more dollars than the less key ones.” Other models look at the pay of each employee or group and engage in benchmarking based on that to determine the merit increases, she says. If there’s a top performer who has already maxed out in terms of salary, a company can use a bonus as a way to reward without overpaying for the employee.
Merit raises are supposed to motivate the whole staff, but can quickly breed resentment if employees don’t think it’s done fairly. Salary, bonuses and raises are supposed to be kept secret but have a funny way of making it out to the masses in a company. If the company has a plan and sticks to it can avoid any ugliness and resentment, which can lead to high turnover. “In order for the employer to get the most out of the merit pay program the goals have to be clear,” says Kerekes. “Employees really need to understand what it is they need to do to be considered a top performer.”
Why Giving Merit Raises Matters is a post from: Glassdoor Blog
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A Guide To Retaining Employees: The CLIMB Method
Retention is on the mind of every leader and human resources professional. Although there has been a rise in the size of the talent pool over the last few recession-driven years, companies are still finding it difficult to recruit employees with the specialized skills needed to drive innovation and creativity to advance business initiatives.
This challenge has forced employers to focus more on who their most talented employees are and how to keep them. Less than 50 percent of respondents in the SHRM Research Spotlight on Employee Engagement say that they are satisfied with their opportunities for career development and advancement. This has a huge impact on being able to retain these employees. To drive retention, there are a few simple things that employers and HR professionals need to remember daily.
Employees want to climb the corporate ladder in order to gain greater success, and employers should help. Follow these five easy steps in what I call the CLIMB method so that new heights of performance and value are achieved.
C hallenge
L oyalty
I nvestment
M easurement
B uilding
1. Challenge. One of the top reasons employees quit is dissatisfaction with the job duties. If the employee starts a job that is different than described during the interview process, or if a long-time employee becomes dissatisfied because they are not busy, the end result can mean leaving the company. One of the easiest and least used tactics is delegation. As a leader, it is often faster or more accurate to handle something yourself. This behavior is the worst option, though, when you have an employee who needs and wants greater challenges. By taking time to teach and demonstrate what you need from the employee, you are building a challenging work environment for the employee to show their skills. This type of work environment is difficult to leave.
2. Loyalty. One thing you may have heard is that human resources took the “human” out of work relationships. While I don’t believe this is true, what is true is that employment laws that have been written and passed over the last forty years sometimes make people fearful of how much they can share at work. This often creates leaders who are cold and impersonal with their staff. One of the best ways to engage a staff member is to show your human side. Be sincere and honest as you share information with them. Additionally, provide feedback and recognition in a way that is meaningful to that individual. By being more personal with your staff, you will build the loyal relationship that is needed to increase the odds the employee will stay with your company.
3. Investment. Does your company invest in your employees? Do you provide training for all employees? Do you enhance their benefit options or lead the competition in providing matching funds for 401K plans? A key way to retain your talented employees is by showing that you are willing to give time and money to build their skills or personal wealth.
4. Measurement. HR analytics is on the lips of many HR professionals and business leaders today. Why? HR holds all the data on employees, and yet it is one of the hardest to obtain data due to lack of analytic tools. Whether it’s performance feedback, employee opinions, medical benefit usage or other data-based questions, employers need a way to collect this data in a timely and efficient manner if they are ever going to be able to analyze and use the results. As an employer, you need to do all you can to provide experiences that are not only based on measurement, but also provide opportunities so that people can be measured.
5. Building. This may be the single most important step in retaining your top employees. Building is the way you not only look at their performance and value today, but it’s also the way you demonstrate your commitment to growing the team so that the existing superstar has opportunities to lead in the future.
Focusing leaders on not only how they are climbing the ladder, but also how to engage their team to climb is where the rubber meets the road. Leaders with a more reactionary or lackadaisical approach will see higher turnover rates compared to their highly engaged counterparts. Which type of leader will you be?
A Guide To Retaining Employees: The CLIMB Method is a post from: Glassdoor Blog
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7 Reasons Not To Apply For The Job
Finding a job is nothing short of challenging. Whether you’re currently working in a position you hate or have embarked on a seemingly endless job search , almost any opportunity is more enticing than your current situation.
Jobs certainly aren’t a dime dozen in the current job climate, but this doesn’t mean you should apply to every position you come across. It might be time to reconsider the way you’re searching for employment if this tactic is part of your job search strategy. You may feel like you’re raising your chances of landing a position by blindly applying to everything on your radar, but you’re actually wasting valuable time and energy.
Before you apply to the list of openings you’re itching to get through, here are seven signs to watch out for:
1. Something’s Fishy. Have you ever read a job listing and felt like something was off? Maybe there’s a lack of information regarding the employer, little to no notation of qualifications, or, a serious red flag: the explanation that you can work from anywhere. Scam job listings are more prevalent than most of us would like to think. Do your research on every posting you come across before giving out your personal information.
2. You’re Desperate. Your search for employment is taking way longer than you had hoped, and you’re running low on funds. While you may need a position now, it’s highly unlikely you’ll win over a hiring manager with desperation in your tone. Companies aren’t looking for employees who are biding their time; they’re looking for the perfect match for company culture for the long haul. Consider seeking out part-time work during your job search to ensure you’re focused on landing a position you’re fit for.
3. You’re Not Qualified. A successful job search often comes down to how well you understand and market your experiences and skills. If you’re a recent graduate, it’s probably not in your best interest to apply for the position asking for three to five years of experience. If the qualifications they’re asking for are nowhere to be found on your resume, you should pass – and lying is never an option.
4. Your Network Says No. One way to gain insight on a job opportunity is to ask your network if they or anyone they know has worked for the company. You will gain important feedback regarding your potential employer, as well as the position at hand. If you’re receiving a lot of negative feedback, it might be best to skip out on applying.
5. Research Brings Up Red Flags. Scanning online resources for detailed company reviews on an employer is an important step in the job search. Some red flags you may encounter during your research could include a lack of web presence, consistently poor reviews on Glassdoor , no employees listed on LinkedIn, or even negative online reviews from previous workers. Carefully take these signs into consideration before you move forward in the application process.
6. You’re Overqualified. Many jobs act as important stepping stones in your career – everyone got their start somewhere. But if the position you’re considering doesn’t align with your career goals in any way, think about your future. With nearly half of Americans with college degrees working in jobs they’re overqualified for, it might be best to avoid getting stuck in this situation.
7. Company Values Are Off. You may be a perfect fit when it comes to qualifications, but if you don’t share similar values with the company, this could be troublesome. Every company has a unique mission, interests, work environment, and way of doing business. Many hiring managers won’t consider candidates who lack value alignment, but why would you want to work for a company you don’t believe in?
Save time during your job search by only applying for positions that are a good fit for you. This means researching, evaluating, and understanding each position and potential employer before applying.
7 Reasons Not To Apply For The Job is a post from: Glassdoor Blog
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10 Cool Office Spaces
While beige office walls may help keep some focused on the work at hand, for others it’s often seen as a blank canvas for fostering creativity. Whether it’s halls decorated like the New York City subway system or a floor-to-ceiling spiraling slide, these 10 companies show how to use and design office space in a whole new way.
See which photos employees have shared on Glassdoor that make up our list of 10 offices you wished you worked in:
1. Epic , headquartered in Verona, Wis., has designed an office hallway to look like the New York subway. More Epic Photos .
2. Google keeps some fun in mind at one of their offices as employees can literally slide from one floor down to the next . More Google Photos .
3. Microsoft employees pull up a seat around this large touchscreen tablet table. More Microsoft Photos .
4. Infosys brings games to one of their offices by adding in a bowling alley. More Infosys Photos .
5. Box , headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., has a playful take on seating arrangements as they added swings to their office. More Box Photos .
6. Facebook employees can take advantage of a video game room. More Facebook Photos .
7. Groupon breaks away from traditional office norms by adding color and modern design to their office. More Groupon Photos .
8. Edelman , a multinational public relations company headquartered in Chicago, Ill., also adds bright colors and modern design elements. More Edelman Photos .
9. Autodesk employees collaborate in architecturally interesting spaces. More Autodesk Photos .
10. HUMAN Healthy Vending adds comfy chairs that line its reception space. More HUMAN Healthy Vending Photos .
What’s your office like? Share your office photos on Glassdoor.
10 Cool Office Spaces is a post from: Glassdoor Blog
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How To Find A Career Mentor
Everyone knows they should have a mentor but many don’t know how to find one. Mentors come in many flavors and hold different monikers, but the two common traits they should all possess is a willingness to give unbiased advice and expertise in the areas you are looking to improve.
“A mentor is extremely important to grow your skills and enhance your career path,” says Susan Ruhl, a managing partner at OI Partners – Innovative Career Consulting in Denver. “It doesn’t matter if the person is internal or external (to your company) as long he or she understands what your personal development goals are.”
Before you can start your hunt for the perfect mentor or advisors, career experts advise to do a little soul searching to pinpoint your weaknesses and to determine your goals . Let’s say you want a marketing job . Come up with a list of skills you’ll need to make the transition and then identify any gaps. Once you know where you need improvement you can pinpoint someone who has those skills. “You have to be clear in what you are asking for,” Julie Bauke, career strategist, president of The Bauke Group , and author of Stop Peeing on our Shoes: Avoiding the 7 Mistakes that Screw Up your Job Search. . “You can’t just say, ‘I want to get to the top of this company can you mentor me.’”
Finding a mentor can take a bit of detective work especially if you are new to a company. Sure the C-level executive would be the ideal mentor, but since that may not be a realistic option unless you are high-up yourself, it’s a good idea to observe people above you and focus on the ones that do their job well. “I wouldn’t reach out to a stranger,” says Ruhl. “I wouldn’t go up to the CEO unless I had a good relationship” with him or her. Ruhl says to take the company culture into account when choosing a mentor. If it’s a very relaxed structure then you may be able to go very high-up when targeting a mentor, but if it’s a rigid company structure you may want to start by going only one level above you. It’s also important to choose someone that others within the organization admire and respect. The worst thing you could do is align yourself with someone that has no respect within the company. 
Once you’ve pinpointed your mentor or mentors you have to come up with a good reason why you want that person to advise you. For instance, if you admire how that person handles herself in a meeting, then ask her for tips on giving presentations. If you want to improve your customer relations skills, compliment your potential mentor on his knack for dealing with disgruntled customers. “You have to say, ‘the reason I am hoping you’ll mentor me in this one area of my career is because I love the way you handle yourself in meetings,’” says Bauke. “It’s easy for them to say yes because there’s something you admire about them.” By providing specifics, you are giving the mentor a path for success instead of making it feel like work for them, she says.
Not one person is going to give you everything you need, which is why career experts say you should try to have more than one mentor. Creating a team of advisors with expertise in different aspects of your career is the best way to get well-rounded advice and guidance. It also reduces the burden on the mentors, and if it doesn’t work out with one mentor you’ll have others to use as sounding boards. It’s also important to set expectations ahead of time in terms of how the mentorship will go. For instance, will it be something formal where you meet every other week for a specific amount of time, or will it be informal where you can email or call the person when you need advice?
While most people think of mentorships as an older person mentoring a younger one, it’s becoming common to see the reserve going on. “The younger workforce can be just as informational as the older workforce,” especially in areas of technology, says Ruhl. “It’s become a two-way street.”
How To Find A Career Mentor is a post from: Glassdoor Blog
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Never Hear Back? 6 Ways To Combat Bad Job Search Experiences
Last year, 75 percent of workers who applied to jobs using various resources said they never heard back from the employer. Does that sound all too familiar to the experiences you’ve dealt with during your search for a new job ?
You’re certainly not alone. Recent survey results show that more than one in four workers reported having had a bad experience when applying for a job. In today’s job climate, applications and resumes are often met with silence. While the job search certainly presents a wide variety of frustrations for job seekers, nothing breeds more distaste than a poor candidate experience.
You might be wondering what constitutes a poor candidate experience. It’s made up of two main factors: lack of follow through and employer inconsistencies. Candidates are often left without acknowledgment of a received application or never informed of the hiring decision after the interview.
The highly competitive job market isn’t a secret to job seekers or employers, but it certainly doesn’t mean you’re deserving of a poor candidate experience. While employers are beginning to understand the harms of their silence, it’s important for job seekers everywhere to seek out new ways to stay positive in negative job search situations.
Here are six ways to manage poor experiences during your job search:
1. Keep Moving. Applying to positions and never receiving a response can be frustrating. One simple way to handle this negative experience is to continue moving forward. Rather than waiting around for a reply to every position you apply for, focus on seeking out and applying for new opportunities. This will take the pressure off the looming questions and waiting period often accompanied with a slow or unresponsive hiring process.
Throughout your job search, build and maintain a list of positions you plan to apply for. This will help you keep track of your opportunities, monitor where and when you applied for a position, and also remember those companies that had less-than-desirable hiring processes.
2. Remain Professional. While you may want to show your distaste for the lack of responsiveness from companies during your job search, it’s important to remain vigilant and professional. This isn’t a time to blog or post status updates shedding light on your situation. Instead, reach out to the employers you haven’t heard back from. If you are still given the silent treatment, it’s time to let it go.
3. Focus on the Positives. Poor experiences during your job search are likely to take a toll on your self-confidence and overall positivity. Don’t let the poor hiring processes of potential employers ruin your motivation. Focus on the positives by regularly revisiting your career goals, achievements, and searching for new ways to fuel your hunt for employment.
4. Cope with the Silence. With 29 percent of job applicants never receiving acknowledgment from an employer, it’s safe to say silence is a problematic portion of the job search. No job seekers deserve to experience this, but it’s important to manage your expectations to accommodate this experience. Don’t beat yourself up over not hearing back from every hiring manager you send your application to. Instead, focus on finding new ways to better showcase yourself to employers.
5. Build Your Network. One way to combat the unresponsiveness and employer inconsistency during the job search is by actively networking . Building professional relationships is a beneficial way to gain insight into job opportunities before your competition. Your networking connections might also offer you the chance the bypass the application process by forwarding your resume to a hiring manager. Skipping a step in the process and fueling your status with an insider referral is a surefire way to increase your chances of response.
6. Seek Out Good Candidate Experiences. During your job search, make a point to seek out positions with employers who are known for treating their candidates with respect. Attempt to gain insight into the hiring process by asking your network and doing some of your own company research . Potential candidates and current employees are likely to share their positive experiences with others.
Take the appropriate steps toward handling the poor experiences during your job search. Remain vigilant; your opportunity could be just around the corner.
Never Hear Back? 6 Ways To Combat Bad Job Search Experiences is a post from: Glassdoor Blog
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How Not To Set Goals – And Have Better Success
You have already taught yourself how to fail. You set goals and you fail to reach them. You may even be a serial goal-setter. Maybe you set goals every January. Maybe even more often. The more times you set them, the more chances to fail.
You might be a goal-mover. You take all the goals you have on your calendar for one day, and just move them over to the next day. Maybe you do this daily. Maybe you’ve just learned to let goals expire, lingering on your calendar until enough days pass and you can’t see them anymore.
Maybe you’re a goal-sabotager. You know exactly what you’ve resolved to do, and you arrange your life so you couldn’t possibly reach those resolutions . You know, your goal is to lose 15 pounds so when you go grocery shopping, you slip in cookies or chips (in case someone drops by). Or worse, you ask for a letter of recommendation and then never follow-up (after all, you wouldn’t want to bother someone!).
Failing to meet what you’ve called your “goals,” doesn’t mean you haven’t been successful. In fact, if you took as much time to take an inventory of your successes and learning what really matters to you, you’d probably be impressed. You probably are a success .
But, why look at what you’re good at and what you’ve found compelling to accomplish, when you can pick away at your weaknesses? Sure, you may have loved StrengthFinder , but who would strive to be more of their authentic self – when you can drive yourself into a depression by being unfair, unrealistic and unkind.
The biggest bullies we meet are ourselves. Hence, my sarcasm about all of our goal-setting antics. I am a recovering goal-setter. I set goals for years – done it with professionals, gurus and experts – and I have given it up for success.
I am largely successful because I no longer have goals.
I have requirements instead.
Requirements are like deadlines. They must be met. There’s nothing optional. Requirements aren’t “shoulds.” Requirements are fundamental to life.
May I respectfully recommend you stop “shoulding” on yourself by setting goals that sound like something you should do? How about sitting with yourself and looking at what you have done.
Make a success list no less than 100 items long.
That means you count adopting a shelter dog, making a great meal for a sick friend, staying up all night getting that report done, looking up a “word of the day” to post on Facebook every day, keeping current on wars or being the first in your crowd to wear those ugly eyeglasses that are so popular.
When you look at your life to see the road you have chosen, you have the best vision to plan the road ahead. You have done plenty of new things that have enlarged your vision up until now, so make sure you fill in a requirement for how much new you need. In fact, fill out a list of no less than 100 requirements for yourself.
Let your first requirement be honoring the success you are. – Originally posted on Personal Branding Blog by Nance Rosen
How Not To Set Goals – And Have Better Success is a post from: Glassdoor Blog
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